Hydrometallurgical treatment of copper containing materials, such as copper ores, concentrates, and the like, has been well established for many years. Currently, there exist many creative approaches to the hydrometallurgical treatment of these materials. The recovery of copper from copper sulfide concentrates using pressure leaching promises to be particularly advantageous.
The mechanism by which pressure leaching releases copper from a sulfide mineral matrix, such as chalcopyrite, is generally dependent on temperature, oxygen availability, and process chemistry. In high temperature pressure leaching, typically thought of as being pressure leaching at temperatures above about 200° C., the dominant leaching reaction in dilute slurries may be written as follows:4CuFeS2+4H2O+17O2→4CuSO4+2Fe2O3+4H2SO4  (1)
During pressure leaching of copper sulfide concentrates, such as chalcopyrite containing concentrates at medium temperatures (e.g., at temperatures in the range of between about 140° C. to about 180° C.), however, a significant fraction of the sulfide converts to elemental sulfur (S°) rather than sulfate (SO4−2). According to the reaction:4CuFeS2+4H2SO4+5O2→4CuSO4+2Fe2O3+8S°+4H2O  (2)
For example, experimental results show that at about 160° C. and about 100 psi oxygen overpressure in the pressure leaching vessel, from about 60 to about 70 percent of the sulfur in the super-finely ground copper sulfide concentrate is converted to elemental sulfur, with the remainder being converted to sulfate.
Elemental sulfur is a hydrophobic substance. In the pressure leaching process slurry, under certain temperature and solution conditions, sulfur has a tendency to agglomerate. Moreover, molten elemental sulfur becomes highly viscous us at elevated temperatures. For example, the viscosity of molten sulfur increases from less than 100 centipoise at 150° C. to more than 90,000 centipoise at 185° C. As such, the molten sulfur may tend to encapsulate metal values in the process slurry, including precious metals and unreacted metal sulfides, and/or stick to various parts of any apparatus in which processing operations on the molten sulfur are performed. Encapsulation of the metal values, for example, copper, precious metals and the like, tends to make subsequent recovery of such metal values extremely difficult using conventional processing techniques. U.S. Pat. No. 6,676,909 disclose that while pressure leaching under medium temperature conditions offers many advantages, prior medium temperature pressure leaching processes characteristically have suffered from incomplete metal (e.g., copper) extraction resulting from either passivation of the metal sulfide particle surfaces or by the metal sulfide particles becoming coated with molten elemental sulfur. Proper control of such pressure leaching processes, as described therein, enables the formation of elemental sulfur in addition to the desired metal recovery (e.g., copper). This patent is hereby incorporated by reference. However, recovery of metal values that may be contained in the elemental sulfur-containing residue, such as, for example, precious metals, may be difficult with use of conventional techniques, and as such they may be lost. Moreover, if the acid produced by such processing techniques could not be used at the site where the recovery was performed, costs would be incurred in connection with transportation of the residue or handling of the acid. An effective and efficient method to manufacture sulfuric acid from sulfur-bearing material, particularly elemental sulfur-containing residue resulting from pressure leaching operations operated at medium temperatures (e.g., about 140° C. to about 180° C.) is needed. Moreover, an effective and efficient method to enhance recovery of any metal values encapsulated within the sulfur-bearing material would be advantageous.